How Can Hakuho's New Sumo Venture Succeed? Let's Make Sumo Better

Part 1

A Quick Background - Skippable

Hakuho is the greatest sumo wrestler ever. When you have the greatest ever in a sport, you want to keep them around, even if they’re not perfect. Michael Jordan owns part of an NBA team. Wayne Gretzky is the same. Neither of those men is without their warts, but if you asked the commissioners and owners of their respective leagues, there would be no hesitation that it’s best to keep your GOATs (Greatest of All Time) inside the sport.

Hakuho seemed set for a similar trajectory. He had tensions with the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) as an active wrestler, but was able to obtain the elder stock necessary to have his own sumo stable post retirement. Top prospects came to his stable with the idea of training with the greatest ever. Furthermore, his eponymous youth tournament, the Hakuho Cup, was another achievement among his many. Not only did it grow over time, it attracted international attention and delegations; that is no mean feat for a sport than can often be insular.

Unfortunately, one of his wrestlers - Hokuseiho - was found to have been physically abusive towards stablemates, and the JSA determined that Hakuho’s supervisory actions were insufficient. As a result Hakuho was punished by essentially having his stable folded into another indefinitely with no clear criteria on when or even if it would ever be allowed to be independent again. That all came to a head after the 2025 Natsu Basho when Hakuho announced his resignation.

Abuse in sumo stables is an all too common problem in the sport, and I do applaud the association for coming to take it increasingly serious. Part of that will involve stern punishment for those that make sumo a less welcoming place. It must be addressed.

In no way do I wish to excuse Hakuho’s neglect as a stablemaster. Being put in charge of these young men is an incredibly weighty duty, and it is his job to serve as a role model for them. In fact, I think the association did the right thing when it would have been easier to sweep it under the rug as has been all too common in the sports past.

But this is not to say that the JSA acted in an optimal way. If they believe that Hakuho has proven unworthy of running a stable again, so be it. I think the chief sin is the utter lack of any guidance provided. Perhaps Hakuho or someone else will come out and share how and when he could’ve had his stable restored, but everything I’ve read leads me to believe that has not happened. Furthermore, if you have followed the sport, it’s hardly a secret that the JSA can be arbitrary, secretive, and there are certainly things one could point to if you felt they were less accommodative towards foreigners in the sport. I can hardly blame Hakuho from wanting to walk away from a sport, or rather an association, to whom he has given so so much and that has failed to reciprocate a fraction of that. That’s more or less all I have to say about that, and I rather dislike having to open this with the necessary background by recounting the fallibility of the GOAT of one of my favorite sports and the poor management of it by the powers that be.

A Sumo Rival?

There are reports that Hakuho is far from leaving sumo as a whole and rather looking to set up a potential rival organization. It’s still early days, but this gives us an incredibly rare opportunity to consider in a semi-realistic sense what a better sumo looks like. I won’t pretend that I have any insights into what they are looking to do but as I’ve said before I watch a lot of sports and think about sumo a lot so here’s a list of ideas I think we could improve on sumo with and can be considered my job application if Hakuho, or someone reading this connected to him, wants an idea guy.

Please note that this is simply a list of potential tweaks and some of them might be mutually incompatible. Again, it’s early days with few details and even more importantly: I’m an anonymous guy writing an English language stats blog of suggestions for a Mongolian sumo wrestlers who is collaborating with Japanese companies on this project. This is meant to be fun and hopefully even spark discussion on how the sport we love might be improved.

This week’s piece will be focused more on rules and regulations, and the next piece will be more focused on potential marketing. That said there might be some overlap between the two.

The Matches Themselves

Two wrestlers putting their hands in the dirt, launching into each other, and then the match ending when one of their body parts touches the ground or outside the ring is pretty much perfect as is. I do not think sumo fans should take this for granted!

Another of Japan’s top sports, baseball, I doubt people want to leave as unchanged. The introduction of the pitch clock was met with near unanimous approval. I imagine when the challenge system - allowing batters to challenge balls or strikes - is introduced to the MLB in the next couple years that will receive similar praise. The NBA has “how to improve the game” as a near constant topic of conversation. Even in boxing you’ll occasionally see people float rule changes to improve the sport. Sumo is not in that situation; I can’t even think of any proposals to improve the action itself and as a result I think Hakuho and his venture should retain all the rules as they are.

Actually, I do think there is a proposal that might not necessarily improve the sumo action, but I think simultaneously might not necessarily make it worse either. In this case it would be primarily for safety, having the wrestlers start from a two point or standing stance like the below photo so that the initial collision is less violent.

I will fully admit that I cannot tell you with any certainty what would be the result of this in terms of the action. Would it make belt techniques more effective? Would it make pusher thrusters less effective? I’m guessing for the latter yes as they generate less initial force, but again the proposal here is more about the safety as opposed to the action.

The Dohyo

I’ll keep this short: the Dohyo should be lower in this sumo venture. It’s another safety feature. A lower Dohyo will lead to fewer injuries and trauma in the course of matches. It’s a no-brainer and they should have already done this years ago for the health of the wrestlers.

Officiating

As a soccer fan who has seen the VAR (Video Assistant Referee) addition play out, I think a point that can’t be understated is: having perfect officiating is impossible, and there are tradeoffs between accuracy and timeliness of decisions.

So I’ll keep it brief and vague here: an on the ground official should make the initial decision, and a video replay assistant should check to see if they agree. Perhaps a challenge should be allowed to the wrestlers. That said, the inherent difficulty that we’ve seen play out is that the referee on the ground and the video referee will mutually abdicate responsibility to each other. The referee on the ground will ref knowing he has the video as a safety net but the video assistant will be hesitant to overturn the ref for various reasons. This inherent tension is unresolved in every sport I follow.

The only other point I’ll add is that I think that the Gyoji (sumo refs) do a good job explaining their decisions generally regardless of how accurate you think they are. I’m a massive fan of how in rugby the referees give detailed explanations, and furthermore the respect that players must show them. Other sports could learn a thing or two from that, in my opinion.

The Tournaments

I also think that the general tournament structure is good, but in this case I do think there are improvements that are possible.

To start: I think that having wrestlers compete in an odd number of matches is terrific. You either finish with more wins than losses or vice versa. It really heightens the tension for the final match when both guys are on the bubble.

However the tournament length in days is where I think we might get to our first big tweak. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself by bringing this up, but I imagine tickets to the tournaments will form a non-insignificant portion of revenue for what this venture ends up being. Furthermore, the amount of wrestlers will almost assuredly be fewer than the several hundred in current sumo. As a result, I do think that multiple matches in a day would be better for multiple reasons.

First off though is that this is a feasible proposal. We’ll often hear about on the Jungyo tour (where wrestlers go around Japan in between tournaments) that guys will perform numerous matches on the same day. They’re not going full effort, but having proof-of-concept is important and perhaps the extra time between tournaments would make this on the whole even safer¹. For the justification, I believe that to compensate for fans seeing fewer unique wrestlers and to prevent oversaturation of the product - how many cities could fill even a small arena for 7-15 straight days of an upstart sumo league? - that multiple matches for wrestlers on the same day is prudent.

The second suggestion: I believe that not only should there be individual tournaments, but that there should also be a larger over-arching “season”. This would mean that if Onosato won the most matches and or perhaps the most tournaments in a calendar year for instance that there should be some sort of additional prize. I actually have some exciting ideas related to this for the next piece on commercialization.

The third suggestion, which I’m actually less hot on but I believe should be raised regardless: a playoff structure. There’s a bunch of different ways this could be implemented but the basic idea would be to have 9, 15, however many initial matches, and then a certain number of competitors who did well enough are then entered into a tournament structure. It might look like the below:

Again, I do not favor this tournament structure unless the entire tournament is structured like this. In short, if you introduce something like this at the end of the “normal matches” then the effect will be to make it less likely that underdogs can win. Lately we probably have had a few too many underdog Yusho winners in my opinion, but the current structure forces Yokozuna and Ozeki to be on their A level game days 1-15. If they have a playoff at the end then they only need to ensure that they make the playoffs and then they have a clean slate and having dropped a day 3 match suddenly no longer matters.

The Ranking and Banzuke Making

One of the few details that has emerged so far is that Hakuho has referred to other countries having their own Yokozuna. I’ll get to the international component under the Competitors section but I do think having relatively equivalent titles for whatever this new venture ends up being would be ideal. My partner works in IP law and I have played many Ace Attorney games so I do believe the fact that the title Yokozuna being centuries old means that upstart competitors would be able to use that title (and others similarly old) but to be clear this is not me applying to be Hakuho’s legal counsel nor is this legal advice.

Jokes aside, I do think that the naming conventions when feasible should be retained.

If we do retain Yokozuna and Ozeki, I do think it would be good if they put out guidelines for what wrestlers have to do to attain those ranks. The guidelines need not be super strict, but just saying that 26 wins over two tournaments is the general starting point for Yokozuna consideration would be helpful. In particular a clarification of the “Yusho-equivalent” would be much appreciated. I think we have a good understanding of that, but I’d also like to hear officially how the powers that be conceive of that.

As for the Banzuke, I have two suggestions. First and most importantly: I think we should have more insight into that process. My second is that I think they should move to a more formulaic process.

Guess the Banzuke is a fun game for us sumo fans, but I also think that there is something to be said for having a more rational process. It tends not to come up as the big financial difference is between the Makushita and Juryo (third and second divisions) which are less focused on but it quite frankly does not sit right with me that these men sacrifice so much for our entertainment and yet their pay can be greatly affected by the inscrutable decisions of men behind closed doors that we have little insight into.

Now a more formulaic process doesn’t mean that we would have an algorithm we plug a bunch of numbers into and it spits out the rankings/Banzuke necessarily - although if you want that, I have done work to do exactly that previously. Rather, I think it would make sense to have something akin to the ranking system in college football. We can have a panel of experts who provide their rankings/Banzuke (publicly!) and then just combine them all to get the final product. In fact we could even combine that with a more algorithmic ranking so we get both a more subjective judgment from experts alongside a more objective one from a disinterested computer looking at strength of schedule.

I would say that the principle here is that the venture absolutely can retain flexibility for these rankings and the Banzuke, but that greater transparency also represents an opportunity to not only help fans, but to also help folks feel that everything is above board and in line with stated practices.

The Matchmaking

Here is where I think the major disagreements begin. Currently in sumo the way it works is that Yokozuna will begin by facing their weakest opponents in the first week: guys in the upper Maegashira, lower Sanyaku (Komosubi and Sekiwake) and then the final day if there are two Yokozuna they’ll fight each other.

Two Yokozuna facing off on the final match of the final day sounds great in theory, and often is in practice, but all too often injuries result in that match not materializing.

Unfortunately I don’t have a slam dunk idea on how to exactly fix this, but I do think that this venture should look to have some of those highly anticipated matches earlier.

This will tie into the marketing aspect, but I think that this new league should heavily encourage the formation of rivalries. This means that you might have guys matching up who in the current format wouldn’t typically meet in a tournament. I think as long as the organization is transparent about this, and also meaningfully responds to fan feedback that this could represent an improvement over the current matchmaking.

The Competitors

This is the rule I’m most passionate about: unlimited registration of wrestlers from any and all countries!

If you are unfamiliar, in the 90’s, threatened by the influx of Hawaiians in particular, the JSA banned foreigners from sumo. The rule was subsequently relaxed to allow one foreigner per stable. This is an explicitly discriminatory rule.

I will say I think that some restrictions are understandable given sumo’s unique place in Japanese culture and society, but I think as the rule currently exists it is too tight².

However, as Hakuho’s new venture will not have the same heritage and history inherently I think that there is no need for such restrictions.

Luckily as we alluded to above, Hakuho already sees Yokozuna across other countries - whoever and whatever those are - as the basis of the talent for this.

An additional point about the competitors: in sumo there are currently restrictions where you can only enter professional sumo between the ages of 16 and 25.

I think we should also relax this on the upper end but tighten it up on the lower end. So maybe 18-30, or perhaps no upper age limit. The talent level will assuredly be lower than Japanese sumo, so I think that one way to both drum up interest and to increase the pool of fans, looking to get ex pro athletes from other sports would be a good idea. Guys that couldn’t make it in the NFL or hockey or professional fighting might have a final chance to regain glory here. I’ll expand on this in the next piece for the marketing aspect.

The Stables

This is the final topic I’m discussing for a potential rule change and it also is a a good opportunity to transition to the piece next time which will focus more on how to market this new venture to ensure it’s a success. Stables should not just be stables: sumo stables should be teams.

One of the cool things about sumo is that in theory any Japanese male between the age of 16-25 can walk off the street and work their way up to the top. Most won’t, and some stables cater towards guys that will never see higher than Makushita if not Sandanme (3rd and 4th division respectively). I don’t think that should change with “traditional sumo” but for Hakuho’s new venture there almost certainly will not be the financial wherewithal to carry guys that don’t have the potential if not ability to be top tier competitors.

This means that if properly structured there can be apples to apples comparisons between various stables or “teams.”

Conclusion

It’s incredibly early days. It’s been less than a month since Hakuho left the JSA and something like this will likely require months if not years to get off the ground in any meaningful way. However, we so rarely have the opportunity to think of sumo being different and there being a real chance of that change being implemented I think as fans we’d be remiss not to fantasize a bit. I can’t wait to hear what other people think and am incredibly excited for part 2 where we go over the potential commercialization.

1. We’re pretty far in the realm of speculation, but the analogue I’m thinking of here is the NFL. Sometimes players will play a game on Thursday, as opposed to the typical Sunday game. There is data that suggests more frequent and more severe injuries on Thursday games, and although I’m a data guy, I do think perception can matter too, and the perception Thursday games exacerbate injury risk absolutely exists.

2. I genuinely don’t know what I think a more solid solution would be, but I think that allowing 2 foreigners per stable would be a good start and we could revisit it from there. If I were advising the JSA I would also look to study how European countries develop soccer talent. Many of them have homegrown player rules that encourages the development of local talent while also allowing foreigners to compete. I think in that sense sumo stables are akin to their developmental academies.